we'll swallow the days whole
by Masquerading with Shadows
Summary: In which Beck forgets everything except Jade. Beck/Jade, Beck-centric. For Bade Prompt's Final Round.


**Prompt(s): (S)He didn't tell you, did (s)he? Which is mentioned I think a grand total of once, with the overarching theme of "too young to remember". As you can guess, I am terrible at prompts. That is your warning.**

* * *

Sometimes, the details of his memory become so hazy that they fade only into colours: a light blue the same shade as that of his bedroom walls; a rich yellow that imitates a spotlight, and a blinding flash of white that confuses and disorients him. It's rare that he can make out any defining features of someone's face, the same way you forget what a person looked like in a dream the more you think about it.

Not Jade, though. Jade is always clear, defined, tangible. The weight of her hand in his grounds him and makes the ache in the back of his head stop. She asks him, one time, why he always smiles when he sees her.

"You're real," is all he says.

She's used to his nonsensical romanticism by now.

.

It's a story you've heard before: they don't go to college, and instead spend their days auditioning for Broadway and independent films, sleeping and smoking away their youth in the time in between. Jade does an online economics course at the insistence of her father, but otherwise they become the cliché of the performing arts students their school always told them not to be. They live in his RV, parked somewhere between suburbia and the Hollywood sign, just as they always planned.

(Of course, he forgets how that story ends sometimes, when he's lying on his bed at four o'clock in the morning, Jade turned on her side away from him; close but still far away enough to fill the spaces between them with doubt. How long until his RV becomes too small for two twenty-somethings with no future? How many more scripts with faux happy endings does he need to read before he makes it? How long how long how long?)

.

It goes to plan as much as anything in their life does. Beck makes his way from starring in low budget horror films to appearing in a couple of episodes of a successful TV show, followed by a supporting role in a bigger, better, more expensive film role. Similarly, Jade gets the lead role in an upcoming Broadway feature and receives a call back from an independent film, though more often than not she has dark circles under her eyes from staying up late finishing a paper and waking up early for rehearsal the next morning.

Most of the time they do manage to spend together is devoted to Beck reading over his script, his hand absentmindedly playing with Jade's fingers, while she either tries to catch up on the work she's missed or reads through the stage directions for her musical.

"I miss you," he says one day.

"I'm right here," she answers, less sarcastic than he expected. "But we could do something later. I could take a day off – we could go to the beach."

"Thank you," he says. "I'd like that."

.

It's a while before they get there, though.

.

He knows it's started when he gets a call from his father congratulating him on managing to "see the bigger picture", as he puts it. A month later, this is followed by his mother sending him an article about one of his films that she cut out from at least page seven of the newspaper, and sure enough the week after he gets a call from Cat saying, "I saw you on TV today. It was nice."

"I have official reached the celebrity status of an ex-child star," he announces to Jade. "What about you?"

"I have an obscure internet following that is mainly devoted to uncovering out of date pictures of me and posting bad quality performance videos online," she answers. "Not bad." They celebrate with champagne later that night.

He starts getting invited to proper premieres after that, and the tabloids start to know his name. He takes Jade, and soon enough they're associated with each other and it's like high school all over again.

They're at the premiere of Jade's new movie, sitting in a darkened corner at eleven at night and watching while the last few people leave, only pieces of paper and empty champagne bottles left. She's smiling, slightly drunk, but he can tell she's genuinely happy too.

"When it's like this," she starts, "empty…is it still what you want?"

"What I want is you. Always you," he says.

"You're such a cliché," she says, but kisses him anyway.

.

He wonders, sometimes, if he wants it too much or not at all. There is no satisfaction in the idea of giving it all up to work in a nine-to-five paperwork heavy job, but he can feel a weariness seep into everything he does; the way he reads a script but can't retain the words in his mind and how his actions feel clumsy and fake.

"It's stress," Jade says simply. "You probably just need a break; it will pass."

(What he doesn't tell her is that he wakes up sometimes, disoriented and unsure of whether he's a sixteen year old boy living in his RV or a twenty one year old actor and even whether it's four in the afternoon or four in the morning. All he knows is that there's a pounding in his head and bright, white lights flashing behind his eyes and he knows he wants it to _stop_.)

.

He's sitting at a café rereading one of his scripts for afternoon filming when someone sits down in front of him, carefully pushing aside Jade's empty coffee cup (he smiles at the lipstick stain on the rim; goes through the song she would be singing right now at her rehearsal in his head).

"You forgot to call," they say, before taking off her sunglasses and putting them down on the table.

"Sorry, mum," he replies. "I've been busy."

"So I've heard," she says. "You know, it's a testament to how much I love you that I actually picked up a copy of _Woman's Weekly_ so I could keep track of you."

"I apologise for being a bad son and for not making stalking your own son easier for you," Beck retorts. "How are you – and Mark?"

"Both Mark and I are fine," she says. "I trust your father is fine?"

"Yes."

"Good, then we don't need to spend more than thirty seconds talking about him," she says, smiling. "Now, personally, I think you look dreadful, and multiple writers at the tabloids agree with me. However, it is your body. So, how are you?"

"I'm fine," he says, running a hand through his hair. "I'm just tired."

"You know, sweetheart, just because you're a twenty two year old "professional panty dropper", or so I've heard, you are actually able to get sick," she says. "And by that logic, you are in fact able to go see a doctor once in a while, too."

"I'm fine," he repeats.

"No, I'm your mother, I _insist_," she responds. "This is me politely asking you to see a doctor so I don't fret constantly in the middle of the night that you're going to self medicate with crack cocaine or something." He manages to laugh at that.

"Fine, I'll go," he says.

"Good," she says. "I trust that I won't need to ring Jade to make sure?"

"No, mother," he groans.

"Good."

.

He does, honest to God, _forget_ to go, despite what both Jade and his mother say.

However, it is helpful when two months later Jade shoves a calendar on his face and the second Thursday of the month is both highlighted and circled and has arrows pointing towards it.

"I didn't want you to forget," Jade says derisively. He laughs and shakes his head.

.

He's not entirely sure what happens when he's at the doctor's, only that there are the usual tests and phone calls are made and he's vaguely wondering whether he remember to get health insurance and whether they'd cover this anyway.

Next, the doctor's mentioning words like "early onset" and "untreatable" and a lot of other meaningless words that he's managed to forget. He recalls the next few hours passing the same way ones in dreams do. All he truly remembers afterwards is when he wakes up the next morning, fingers entwined with Jade's as her head rests on his chest.

"Are you going to leave?" he asks her.

"No."

"I love you."

"I know."

.

Alzheimer's disease;_  
_A progressive, organic disease involving degeneration of the brain, resulting in confusion and disorientation.

.

His father pays for them to move into an apartment a block away from his old family home and so their old, beloved RV sits in the underground parking lot in their space because neither of them are irresponsible enough to add to the already burdensome L.A. traffic.

He's struck by how white their new apartment is as soon as he walks into it. The walls are empty, stripped of all their paintings and shelves and anything else that may have even vaguely reminded him of home. There's only one window in the living room that only illuminates one small square of drab carpet, which seems to emphasise just how dark the entire apartment is.

"It looks like a hospital room," he says, surprised at just how tired (and defeated) his voice sounds.

"It looks like a private hospital room," Jade says, having just inspected all the draws in the kitchen. "There's a difference."

"Is that foreshadowing or…?" he asks.

"No, it's a veiled comment about the state of our economy right now," she replies. "I could comment on how every firework show we have on the 4th of July could have paid for at least fifty hospital beds, but that's a different matter."

"Your dad would be proud of you," he says, giving her a smile that looks more like a grimace. She just groans.

.

It works like this: Jade places things post-it notes of things he needs to around the apartment so he'll read them. He doesn't go to premieres with her because the flashing of the cameras disorients him and, besides, he's quite content to listen to her retelling of the people she meets there and the mundane questions they ask anyway.

Occasionally, his parents will come over to check on him, though never at the same time, and Robbie will send him videos and articles to read in the hopes of cheering him up. Similarly, the books Tori gives him start to form a tower on his bedside table, all unfinished and some not even touched at all.

He doesn't mention to Jade that the senseless routine of his days only blurs them together, each passing day becoming less memorable than the one before it.

.

Tori and André come over one afternoon, casserole in hand and uncomfortable smiles plastered on their faces. Despite having lived in their apartment for months now, the rooms still seem bare and foreign, their old furniture having either been built-in or too small for such a large, open space. So, all four of them sit on one couch and two hardback chairs facing each other, curls of steam rising from the mugs of coffee placed on the too small table between them. He barely tries to focus his attention on them as they persist with their small talk, eyes instead drawn to the patch of sun on the carpet behind them.

"Beck, man," André starts. "How are you doing?"

"Same old, same old," he answers, forcing a smile onto his face. "Glad to hear that the music industry isn't treating you too harshly."

"Have you finished the books I gave you?" Tori asks brightly.

"Not quite. But hey, you did give me a lot," he says, eyeing Jade for support, who stares steadfastly ahead.

"Maybe we could catch up sometime soon," Tori continues.

"Maybe."

"Are you sure you don't want to look into acting again?" André says. "May be good for you to get out of the house and do something."

"You're not his mother," Jade mutters.

"Seems kind of pointless when I can't remember my lines, doesn't it?" says Beck as he starts to flick at the armrest of the lounge, his tongue poking into the side of his cheek. Quickly, Jade reaches over and presses a hand to his other hand, fisted at his side, before removing it just as swiftly. He sees Tori and André glance at each other nervously.

"Painting?" André suggests.

"You just seemed a bit depressed," says Tori at the same time.

"Gee, I wonder why," replies Beck.

"Beck, I didn't mean -"

"What Beck means to say is that maybe you shouldn't comment on things you don't know about," Jade interjects, her usual venom replaced with weariness that makes his bones ache when he hears it. "Novel idea, huh?"

"I'm sorry," Tori says eventually.

_Yeah, me too,_ he thinks. _Isn't that the point?_

.

Like most things of that nature, it gets worse.

He starts to spend most of his days going through photo albums that he's acquired from friends and family, writing names and dates on the backs of photos to make sure that he's recorded the details somewhere. Most of his conversations with his mother are of her retelling him childhood memories that he doesn't think he'd remember even if his brain was healthy and normal, but he listens and tries to remember them anyway. Similarly, he and Jade spend many of their nights recounting memories from high school, her reminding him of even the tiniest details he may have forgotten.

It gets to the point where the line between memory and story start to blur together, and he recalls memories of himself as if he were in a film, looking down at a three year old version of himself running in an overly green garden, rather than viewing everything threw his own eyes. He tries to desperately think of any empty spaces he may be missing in his recollection; that in the process of trying to rebuild his memory that Jade or his mother would have left something traumatic or tragic out, only to have someone look at him pityingly and say,

"_Oh._ She didn't tell you, did she?"

But she's always insistent that she hasn't left anything out whenever he asks her, yet he still tries to search for holes or inconsistencies in his patchwork memory, trying to find some comfort in the photos and stories he's gained.

.

He remembers a conversation he had with André, before he knew anything he does now. They're sitting in his RV, a script in front of him and a piece of sheet music in front of André, waiting for Jade to come home.

"Can you even remember a time without her?" André asks him.

"No," he says. "But why would I want to?"

.

He doesn't know how long it is for her to live up to her promise, but he knows she does.

They're lying on the beach, arms touching, looking up at the sky instead of talking. She's managed to find a relatively secluded area, devoid of paparazzi or screaming children, and he's grateful for the chance to listen to the waves crashing against the shore; the sound of her breathing beside him.

"You know," she says, her voice soft. "They say that as it gets worse, you start to live in your memories more. Not so much that you can't tell what year it is, but you start to talk about it more. Most often it's their favourite year of their life."

"That's ok," he says after a pause. "I mean, there are worse things."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," he says. "I get to think about you."

.

(She doesn't tell him about how her breath catches in her throat sometimes when he smiles at her, more dazed than anything else, as if he can't quite place her but he knows she makes him happy. She doesn't tell him about how when she writes "I love you' on a post-it note she doesn't know if she's writing it because she wants him to remember that he loves her or she wants him to know she loves him. She just holds his hand instead.)

.

He wakes up one day not entirely sure of what day of the week it is, but also not worried. Instead, he focuses on the way the light casts shadows over her face, skin tainted blue that stretched out into gold as the rising sun peaks in behind the curtains.

For a single moment, he is perfectly happy.

* * *

**A/N: This is what happens when I have a deadline. I haven't actually read or watched anything like this, though I know such things exist, so anything you may recognise is purely coincidence. This is pretty pointless and awful and for that I apologise, particularly as it will probably be my last proper foray into the Victorious fandom. I would give you a cookie for getting through this, but alas, this is the internet. Once again, apologies. **


End file.
